To Survive a Dozen Deaths
by MissAnnThropic
Summary: Jack’s road to recovery after Ba’al... things will get worse before they get better. Spoilers for Abyss.
1. Chapter 1

Title: To Survive a Dozen Deaths  
Author: MissAnnThropic  
Spoilers: Abyss  
Summary: Jack's road to recovery after Ba'al... things will get worse before they get better.  
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Stargate but my rabid fan behavior. Alas.

"Major Carter!"

Sam turned sharply at her name mostly out of reflex. She was on the razor edge of sheer exhaustion, close to crashing now that she knew the colonel was back and that he was safe. Getting him home became her green-light to succumb to the sleep that had been staunchly denied for days as they tried to free Colonel O'Neill from the clutches of the System Lord Ba'al. Despite that, Sam was valiantly holding off blissful sleep until she had completed a few more chores for the day.

Truth be told, it was taking her that long to come down from the stress 'high' that losing Colonel O'Neill had wrought upon her. It had started when they couldn't save him from the illness they'd all contracted in the Antarctic, amplified when he was taken by the Tok'ra to be 'implanted' with a symbiote to save him, and hit critical mass when he disappeared from the Tok'ra base only to be captured by Ba'al. Once he'd been recovered Sam had gone from working on a full head of steam to running on fumes.

Sam told herself that she would tend this one who'd called her name, see the colonel one more time, then crash in one of the temp quarters for the night rather than head home. She wasn't keen on the idea of having the colonel far from her, anyway.

Jonas Quinn, the one who'd called Sam's name, strode toward her through the gray corridors of the SGC. The Kelownan had a lingering somberness on his face. Sam could remember his first days on SG-1 when his energy had seemed boundless and his solution to everything a perpetual smile. Jonas had changed in his time with SG-1.

"Evening, Jonas," Sam greeted wearily when he reached her side.

Jonas mustered a half-smile, an effort but only for her benefit, and asked, "Have you seen Colonel O'Neill lately?"

"I was going to look in on him before I hit the sack. Why?"

Jonas offered a quick, small shrug. "Just wondered how he was doing."

Sam pressed her lips tighter together at what went unspoken in her teammate's comment. Jonas was always very cognizant of the fact that he was a second string replacement for Daniel. If not to anyone else then at least seen as one to Colonel O'Neill. Jonas was cordial around Jack, little more. It was a reciprocal exchange.

Sam knew what it was like, being the one outside Colonel O'Neill's circle. Her first days on SG-1 she had been the odd one out, watching the crusty, sarcastic colonel interact with the affable, intelligent archaeologist with true (albeit gruff) affection. Seeing the way Colonel O'Neill regarded people he'd bonded to made her want that, too. It made everyone want Jack's favor, because he had a way of making those in his good graces seem like the most privileged people in the universe. It was one of the strongest qualities of his leadership skills that people so wanted to please him, make him proud.

Effort did not guarantee a person a place in Jack's network of friends, however. Jonas was a prime example of that fact, for few had ever worked harder to please Jack than Jonas... and few had met such chilly failure.

Colonel O'Neill chose his friends with great and meticulous care. Sam was part of that select group now, but she remembered what it was like when she wasn't. She could empathize with Jonas.

"Well," Jonas said, "when you see him tell him I hope he's feeling better."

Sam tried to offer a comforting smile and suspected she was failing rather gloriously. She was too damned tired to pull off understanding and reassuring. "You could tell him yourself, you know." 'He can't hold you at arm's length forever' she let go unspoken.

Jonas nearly grimaced at the suggestion but recovered admirably. "I have something I was helping SG-5 with; I should probably get back to that before they come looking for me." Bottom line, Jonas could fight tooth and nail to help Colonel O'Neill but he wasn't qualified yet to be one of those who rallied around Jack once he was safe. Jonas left that to Jack's friends.

"I'll tell him."

"Thanks." Jonas managed a slightly brighter kilowatt smile then turned and headed back the way he'd come. Sam watched after him, sympathetic to his plight. He was trying to buddy up to the colonel when Jack was still raw from losing his best friend. Jack was slow to open up to people and fast to close off, and when he shut off he'd stay that way a long time. Jonas would have a difficult time finding a niche in Jack's life. He would never fill the space left by Daniel Jackson. In so many ways Jonas could never fill in the holes Daniel left.

Sam felt her chest tighten thinking about Daniel. After coming so close to losing the colonel, Sam couldn't think about Daniel's 'death' as well; emotional overload.

Sam turned and was on her way to the infirmary almost before she knew she was moving.

* * *

The infirmary was all but empty when Sam arrived. She paused in the door a second. The lights in the room were dimmed, not for the sake of the hour (because an underground military base never had a true 'night'), but because its sole patient would be put more at ease by the softer illumination.

Sam headed toward her commanding officer; she found Colonel O'Neill's bed only a handful of steps from the infirmary entrance. His shape under the sheet had shifted from the last time she was at his bedside. Instead of on his back he was turned on his side, legs bent and tucked, body insanely still. Sam hesitated, for a moment not sure if he was awake because his face was hidden in shadow. When she drew close enough she could see that he was awake, just void of motion.

"Hello, sir," Sam said softly.

Jack was staring vacantly at the far wall. His face gave no reaction to Sam's voice or presence as she moved closer. He looked almost catatonic.

Sam pulled up a chair and sat down beside Jack's bed. She frowned at his expression. On closer inspection she could see an ashen pallor to his complexion, his lips thin and eyes dull. Sadly, Sam had seen this before; sarcophagus withdrawal was never pretty. What worried her most in the colonel's case was that he seemed so oblivious to his surroundings. With his special ops training, Jack normally had acute situational awareness. He didn't even seem to realize she was there.

"Just thought I'd see how you were holding up before I called it a night. Jonas sends his regards, told me to tell you he hopes you start to feel better soon."

Jack blinked, continued to stare at the wall, then finally, languidly, shifted brown eyes until he was looking at her. Not the most alert he'd ever been, but at least he knew she was there.

Sam smiled to try and reward him for his trouble, then scooted closer to the bed so she could reach up and touch his arm. "I'll be hanging around the base for a few days, have some things to do, so if you need me have someone come get me. You have my permission to badger me if you want." Sam tried to smile in an attempt to elicit a reaction out of her commanding officer.

As Jack watched her blankly, a slight tremor made his body shudder, seemingly unnoticed by the colonel. Sam, however, noticed it and frowned. "Are you cold, sir? Would you like me to get you a blanket?"

Jack's brow flickered, as though starting to furrow then aborting before execution. He settled again into a hazy look of unawareness.

"Sam."

Sam turned toward the female voice and saw Doctor Janet Fraiser standing a short distance from the foot of Jack's bed. Janet's eyes moved back and forth between Sam and casting her standard look of concern toward her patient.

Sam gave the colonel's arm a pat before she stood and moved toward the doctor.

Leading Sam away from the colonel's bed, Janet asked her friend in hushed tones, "What are you still doing here? You should go home and get some sleep."

"Not going home, Janet," Sam said in a tone of 'you know that already'. "I was heading to temps after I dropped in to see how the colonel's doing. How _is_ the colonel doing?"

"As well as can be expected at the moment. I've just been with the forensics' team examining the clothing Colonel O'Neill was wearing when he was brought in."

"And? What did you find?"

Janet turned to squarely face Sam and crossed her arms over her chest. Sam recognized the well-known stance of Doctor Immovable. "Nothing that can't wait until later. You need to get some rest. I don't want two patients if I can help it."

"But Janet­–"

"No buts. The colonel needs rest and so do you."

Sam almost told Janet about running into Jonas in the hall but decided snitching on someone trying to do what she would have done was underhanded.

"All right," Sam relented and almost immediately gave in to a slump of exhaustion. "You'll come get me if anything happens."

Janet nodded with a look that said 'you know I will'. "Promise, now get out of here before I decide it's time for your next physical."

Turning to leave, Sam cast one more look at the colonel. He was staring at the wall again. He looked vulnerable and somehow damaged laying curled under the infirmary sheet. He didn't move his eyes to bid her farewell.

Sam stifled a yawn and made her way, uninterrupted and unmolested, to her temp quarters on the base. She barely shed her boots and pants before falling between the covers and slipping into sleep.

* * *

"May I join you?"

Sam looked up from her lunch tray to see who had asked to sit down at the commissary table with her. It was only verification, because Sam knew by voice alone who had spoken.

"Of course, Janet," Sam gestured for the doctor (and her friend) to join her.

With a sigh, Janet sagged down across from Sam.

"What's wrong?" Sam asked.

"I've just been writing up my report on the clothes Colonel O'Neill was wearing when he escaped from Ba'al."

Sam's eyebrows rose in a clear 'you better spill' look.

Janet leaned closer, took a quick look around to see that no one was within hearing distance, then spoke lowly, "It was more or less what we expected. The bloodstains on the shirt match with Colonel O'Neill's DNA, so he was definitely wounded and probably tortured. Since he has no physical wounds it verifies the conclusion we'd already drawn that he was put into a sarcophagus. We also found traces of some acidic compound on his clothes. But, beyond that, we can't really learn much."

Sam felt her appetite vanish. Ba'al was climbing in giants leaps up her list of Goa'uld she wanted to see die a horrible, slow death.

"How's the colonel doing?" Sam asked. She watched the doctor's face closely for clues that might not come through in words. Sam had popped in to see the colonel when she woke up that morning, but he hadn't reacted much differently than he had the night before. She got only a glazed look in her direction and not a single word before the nurses chased her off.

Janet frowned, a scowl that marred her otherwise gentle countenance. Sam knew that look on her friend.

"Come on, Janet. What is it?"

Janet was quiet a moment before answering. "The withdrawal's gotten pretty bad; he's not having an easy time of it. It's not as bad as when Daniel... because Colonel O'Neill didn't use it while perfectly healthy, but it's still having an effect on him. I just wish there was something I could give him that would suppress its effects."

"I'm sure you're doing everything you can." 'Don't think about how awful the withdrawal must be for the colonel, don't think about when it happened to Daniel,' Sam ordered herself. Sam looked down at her unfinished tray of food and picked at a questionable lump of mashed potatoes with her fork.

Janet frowned further, obviously not assuaged. Doing her best wasn't good enough for Janet if someone she was responsible for was in any kind of pain or discomfort.

Janet leaned closer into the table and looked directly at Sam. Sam abandoned her food completely, setting her utensil down and giving Janet her undivided attention.

"The problem we have is the very thing that probably returned the colonel to us in one piece. Because the sarcophagus healed his wounds we can't know by looking at him what was done to him. We can't know how bad it was so we can't know how much he needs help," Janet glanced around the room to make sure no one was eavesdropping before adding more softly, "because you know that Colonel O'Neill would never confess to needing that kind of help."

Sam dropped her gaze down her folded arms. She knew Janet was right. Colonel O'Neill wouldn't turn to anyone if his wound wasn't the kind that bled, the kind he simply _couldn't_ hide. Acutely, she missed Daniel all over again, because Daniel would have been able to nettle Jack until the colonel blew a fuse... usually the very fuse that needed to blow. There was a courageous abandon to Daniel that had let him tempt Jack's fury when no one else dared, hounding him until Jack finally gave in and showed that he needed. And when he needed, when he needed someone, Daniel was there to collect the pieces that he'd caused to blow apart, putting them back better than they'd been before.

"I was actually looking for you," Janet broke into Sam's thoughts. "I was hoping you could help."

Sam looked up at once. "Absolutely. What can I do?"

"I was hoping you could try talking to the colonel; he's responded best to you."

Sam blinked, for a moment sure Janet was exaggerating. When Janet's face didn't change Sam asked, "Are you serious? This morning he wouldn't even talk to me."

Janet's face softened while her gaze remained pointedly sincere. "He looks at you, Sam. I've been paying close attention, that's more than he's done for anyone else."

Sam's mouth hung fractionally agape.

Janet took Sam's silence as hesitance. "Please, just try."

Sam closed her mouth abruptly and pushed away from the table to head to the infirmary. "Of course." Anything she could do, anything humanly possible, she'd do. At the very _least_ she'd try.


	2. Chapter 2

Sam's steps slowed when she entered the infirmary. It was an all too familiar place for everyone on SG-1. How many times had they pulled each other through by sheer force of will alone within these classified walls? To think of the life-or-death struggles that happened in this very room unbeknownst to most of the world. Powerful things were tested here; strength, character, mettle, friendship. It sometimes felt as though one grew as a person by leaps and bounds every time they were able to walk away from one of those infirmary beds.

Sam looked over at the bed where Colonel O'Neill was. For a split second (before she could help it or stop it) she almost expected to see Daniel there at his bedside. So many places the linguist should be, places he had always been before, where he could be no longer.

Daniel and Jack had been close. Jack would never admit it, but Sam had seen them together too often to be fooled. In his own Jack O'Neill way the colonel had loved Daniel... they all had. Jack still secretly ached, still privately bled, for the loss of Daniel. The men had been friends, best friends, and those who knew the colonel could see that Jack was hurting for the archaeologist's absence at his side.

To many, the friendship between Jack and Daniel had been perplexing. Jack was hard-core military, Daniel had been anything but. Jack followed orders, Daniel had argued with them. Jack was a soldier, Daniel an academic. They were vastly different men, and without question butted heads their fair share, but underneath the bluster and frustration something tensile had bound them together. They had learned that each was someone the other could depend on.

Solid ground ripped away.

Even now, as Sam studied the colonel, it seemed like he was looking for his friend. He was curled on his side, staring vacantly at the empty chair near his bed where Daniel in all rights belonged. Without Daniel there Jack looked isolated and alone. He looked lost.

Sam moved toward the bed, hesitated to take Daniel's seat, then dropped on to its cold plastic and looked into the colonel's face. A sheen of sweat covered his face, fever from the withdrawal. He continued for a minute to stare through Sam absently, as if unaware she'd moved into his line of sight. With a heavy blink he moved his eyes and eventually looked up at her.

"How you holding up, Colonel?" Sam asked. She wasn't expecting an answer but held out at least the hope of one.

She didn't get one beyond a heavy, hazy stare. Janet seemed to think that this small gesture, that he would look at her, was a gift. Sam wanted more than just empty acknowledgement.

"Is there anything I can get for you?"

Jack continued to stare at her blankly; he gave no indication he'd heard her question.

Since her voice didn't stir him, she tried a more direct tactic. She reached up, brushed her fingers over Jack's forehead, then combed her fingers into his gray hair. Her thumb grazed softly over his moist temple, caressing a tentative but steady rhythm against his skin.

Jack's eyes flickered. That ghost-frown returned as he watched her. Sam and Jack rarely touched, not so intimately because it tempted fate, and it seemed even in withdrawal he knew that. He reacted to the unprecedented touch. Sam considered her actions worth it to see Jack even vaguely startle and rise from his drugged bog to silently question her.

Sam offered a small, tense smile.

"Daniel?" Jack croaked, looking at her hopefully. He wasn't confused, he knew it was Sam in front of him; he was asking for Daniel.

Sam bit her lip as she shook her head. "No, sir... Daniel's not... Daniel's gone, remember?"

Jack managed a slightly deeper frown. He seemed a little confused. For a split-second, he looked like he was on the verge of arguing with her. Jack's eyes left Sam to look around the infirmary. Sam said nothing and continued to lace her fingers through Jack's hair. She gave him time and hoped she would be spared having to go into any further detail about Daniel.

Jack stopped his search, finally looked back at Sam, and she knew he knew. Still, he cast his eyes toward the ceiling once before settling his gaze on her.

Jack looked less confused than he had a moment ago.

"Are you okay, sir?"

Jack laid still under her touch (Sam forgot she was still threading her fingers through his hair), then gave a very weak, pathetic nod. "Peachy."

Sam smiled.

Jack reciprocated as best he could on reflex. It wasn't anything spectacular, but it was a relief to Sam all the same.

"Home," Jack uttered.

Sam stared at him a moment, putting together what he meant by that one word. "Janet won't let you out of her sight, you know that."

Jack just watched her. In his eyes, she could tell that he desperately wanted out of the infirmary. It had never been his favorite place to be, but the fact that not so long ago they had lost Daniel here... Sam didn't blame him, to the contrary, she understood.

Sam frowned in thought, then had an idea. She leaned closer to the colonel, Jack watching her in a fascinated stupor. "You won't be able to go home, Janet would flip out at the idea, but maybe I could convince her to cut you loose if you came home with me. She's not going to let you be alone and I'm probably the best deal you're gonna get."

Jack stared into her eyes.

"Will that work for you, sir?" It was the best she could do, and even that much might take a small miracle when Sam presented this idea to Doctor Fraiser. Few would even try to pry one of Janet's patients from her for fear of her protective wrath.

Jack's lips twitched in what was a feeble effort to smile. Sam knew Jack well enough to recognize the intent alone. She gave an encouraging smile back at him before standing to find Janet, her hand finally leaving its strange residence in Jack's hair. His eyes tracked her as she left to track down the good doctor.

* * *

Late evening found Sam behind the wheel of her silver sports car on her way home from Cheyenne Mountain. It was going to be the first time in almost a week that she'd been home and even she found herself looking forward to the comfortable change of scenery. Colonel O'Neill was in the passenger's seat beside her, quietly staring out the window. He hadn't said much when Sam came to get him in the infirmary, nor when she'd gone with him to the locker room to get his street clothes, but once in the elevator headed toward the surface he seemed to come around a little. He'd offered a few small comments, more than the single words he'd uttered in the infirmary. Sam would take every small sign of improvement she could get.

Jack trembled again and reached for the heater controls, turning the temperature up higher in the small car. Sam had let him fiddle and mess with the controls at his discretion, saying nothing. It was already nearly eighty degrees in the small confines of the car, but Sam didn't mind; she could handle a little heat if Jack was chilled.

"How'd you get this past Doc Fraiser?" Jack asked. The farther they were from the base, the more he was alone with someone with whom he felt comfortable, the more he loosened up enough to talk. He wasn't his usual sarcastic, joking self, but it was a big improvement from catatonic Jack.

"Oh, you know," Sam shrugged, "twenty bucks can buy Janet off any day of the week."

Jack's lips curved in a tight smile. The smile never made it to his eyes, but he tried. He shivered again and reached to turn up the heat another notch.

Sam smiled faintly in return as she kept her eyes on the road. Truth be told, Janet had almost flat-out refused to release Jack. Sam couldn't really fault Janet's rationale; Jack had endured far more than one person should in the span of a week, and no one would deny that right now he was sick. Janet was only swayed when Sam told her that Jack had asked to go home. To hear that Jack had spoken to someone, interacted with someone, had convinced her that maybe Jack could best recover in different surroundings.

Sam had hoped that was the truth. It did seem the longer she was alone with Jack the more he came around.

They rode in companionable silence the rest of the way to Sam's house. When they arrived Sam stopped the car and turned to look at the colonel. "Home sweet home."

Jack sat motionlessly and stared out the window at the dark house.

Sam didn't know what to do so she sat in the parked car with him a few minutes, letting him set the pace. When minutes passed and he didn't move, Sam reached over and laid her hand on his shoulder. Jack turned his head in her direction at the touch. It seemed to take him a while to register exactly what she expected.

"Come on, sir," Sam prodded gently, "let's go in."

Jack stared at her a moment before wordlessly unbuckling his seat belt and opening the car door. Sam was quickly after him and walking at his side to the front door. Jack stood by silently as she unlocked the door then gestured him in.

Once inside, Sam closed and locked her front door behind them then turned on the hall light. "I hope having something delivered for dinner is fine with you, Colonel. Janet let you off the base on the condition I watch out for you and I think that prohibits subjecting you to my cooking."

Jack gave an absent nod. "Fine."

Sam took Jack's elbow and guided him toward the living room. "Why don't you sit down and watch some TV; I'll set up the guest room and call in for some pizza."

Jack let her move him into the living room and settle him down on the couch. He made no move to change the channel when Sam turned on the television for him. Sam frowned as he absently watched the Discovery Channel but didn't linger long enough to let it plague her. She lingered just long enough to make sure he would be all right.


	3. Chapter 3

Dinner was an exercise in tense silence. By the time the delivery boy arrived with their dinner Jack had slowly but surely become restive and fidgety. He'd abandoned the couch first thing. He'd also shed his jacket somewhere between the living room and the kitchen, no longer chilled but rather flushed and uncomfortably hot. He didn't complain (that would be more communicating that he seemed disposed to engage in), but Sam did what she could to help him. She turned on the air conditioner, dug out a sweater for herself to wear, and tried to encourage him to eat.

Jack stared down at his plate, eyed the pizza slice, then slid his eyes to either side of the room. His hands were in perpetual motion. Fingers tapped and twitched against the table, his knees bobbed jerkily as he tried to settle his rattled nerves.

Sam watched him warily. She hoped his condition wouldn't escalate into something she couldn't handle the way it had with Daniel. Janet said Jack wouldn't be that bad but it was starting to look damn familiar.

"Sir, please, try to eat something."

Jack glared down sourly at the triangle of pizza before him as he stated defiantly, "I'm not hungry, Carter, lay off, will ya?"

"How do you feel?"

"Antsy." He gave a half-hearted shrug, shifted in his seat, and said flatly and knowingly, "The withdrawal."

Sam nodded sagely. "Will you tell me what Ba'al did to you?"

Jack's eyes jerked up to her, narrowing when she didn't waver from his look. His eventual retort was sharp. "Nothing to tell, Carter, you know what you need to know."

Sam sighed in defeat. Colonel O'Neill was snappy. He could be an absolute bear when he got snappy... and Daniel was the only one who could ever get through to Jack in any meaningful way when he got this way.

"Do you have any idea how many times you went in the sarcophagus?"

Jack glowered darkly. For a frightening second, he looked like he was on the cusp of a fight with her. What held him back she wasn't sure, but instead of launching into a verbal thrashing he got up abruptly and picked up his plate, heading toward the kitchen.

Sam started out of her seat when she heard a crash seconds later. She was away from her table and striding toward the kitchen before she realized she was in motion. She found Jack standing before the sink and kitchen counter, staring down at the broken plate and smeared pizza on the tile floor.

Blinking at him, Sam watched him for some clue as to what he was going to do. Jack continued to stand there, almost statuesque, and stare vacantly at the mess on the floor.

Sam cautiously moved forward and began to pick up the broken pieces of the plate. Jack remained rooted in his spot as she worked in silence.

"I lost count after five," Jack said.

Sam looked up at him, taken off-guard by his comment. "Sir?"

Jack finally pulled his eyes away from the mess on the floor to meet her gaze. "The sarcophagus. I lost count after five."

"Oh," Sam returned, not sure what more she should or could say. She continued to gather the pieces of plate. She contemplated the sauce stain but mostly wondered what she should do with the colonel. Preoccupation and a moment of carelessness and one of the glass pieces Sam was collecting sliced into her finger.

"Ouch!" she hissed. She looked down at her finger as a line of blood began to well up from the break in her skin.

Jack was suddenly kneeling beside her, staring intently at her bleeding finger. Sam was reluctant to move. She wasn't sure what Jack was doing or thinking; she realized that until he was more like himself she might have to make a number of bizarre concessions to him.

Jack moved his hand as though to take hers, hesitated, then almost uncertainly cradled her wounded hand in his own as though it were fragile as he watched the blood stain her skin. His eyes were locked and vacant as he said in a muted voice, "Dying gets confusing... makes it hard to remember how many times."

Sam blinked at him, Jack still staring at her cut, and asked tentatively, "You died each time before they put you in the sarcophagus?" Her chest tightened at the thought. Five times in at least, five times dead. They hadn't thought of a way to save him soon enough... more than five times too late.

Jack only nodded blankly and reached up to dab his index finger against the blood on her hand. He pulled away his hand to study the drop of crimson left on his own finger, engrossed.

Sam slowly began to resume her clean-up of the kitchen floor. Jack continued to kneel on the floor next to her.

Jack looked away from the blood on his finger. It seemed he saw the mess on the floor for the first time. "Sorry, Sam."

"It's fine, sir. Why don't you go sit in the living room? I'll get this cleaned up."

Jack didn't respond at first, then slowly did as he was bade. Sam hurried to finish her task; she didn't want to leave him alone longer than necessary.

* * *

When Sam finished cleaning up the mess Jack had made and put away the left-over pizza she went looking for her commanding officer. She found him in her living room, sitting solemnly at her desk. Sam moved a few steps closer and understood why he was so still. In his hand was a photograph of Daniel, fished from the collection of loose pictures she kept in her desk drawer.

Carter's life was chiseled down to the military essentials, but she was still sentimental. Apparently to find that sentimentality one only had to go as deep as the top drawer of her desk. Sam had pictures of everyone important to her in that pictorial catch-all drawer. Pictures of her father, her mother, her brother Mark and his family, pictures of Teal'c, Jack, and Daniel. The picture of Daniel that Jack held was of the archaeologist at one of Jack's birthday get-togethers. Daniel was leaning easily against the side of Jack's house as the three of them had waited for Jack to return home so they could surprise him. He was smiling, one of those rare but brilliant grins that he'd worn far too infrequently. Daniel's eyes danced when he smiled like that, damn near shimmered like the wormhole event horizon in the stargate. It was so many little things like that that Sam missed so much.

Jack was staring intently at Daniel's image, seeming lost again. His thumb rubbed over the glossy picture. Now it and odd items like that photo were all that was left to them of their good friend.

Sam wasn't blind nor was she ignorant. She knew that if Daniel was still here it would be him taking care of Jack instead of her. Sam never entirely understood what it was they'd shared, but Jack wasn't as scared of looking weak or human around Daniel; Daniel folded to Jack's care with the kind of trust a child had in a parent. Two grown men who had found kindred souls in the most unlikely of places. They'd been perfect counterpoints and it made them better. Maybe in many ways that Sam could never completely understand. She knew only that, with Daniel gone, the scales were skewed and Jack was a little less for it.

Sam found herself speaking before she could censure her thoughts. "I miss him."

Jack tensed at her words, sat up straighter, shoved the photograph back into the drawer with the others, and slid it closed.

Sam flinched at his behavior, knowing it all too well. "I'm sorry," she apologized, "I know you don't like talking about it."

Jack rose from the chair without uttering a word and moved toward the living room window on the other side of the room.

Sam thought of Daniel. Jack needed Daniel... SHE needed Daniel. All the lives Daniel had touched, all the lives he would have touched had he lived, they ALL needed Daniel.

Sam took the seat Jack recently vacated and slid her top drawer open, looking down at her collection of photos. The one Jack had been looking at was on top. Beneath that picture, Sam could see a photo of Jack, propped against the side of his truck, in jeans and a flannel shirt and smiling. Half of her father's face peeked out a layer beneath that, then a partial view of Teal'c in a cowboy hat sitting between Janet and Cassie at a barbecue. Jonas had yet to make an appearance in Sam's drawer of memories. It was quite possible that Jonas would never find his place in this hodgepodge collection of those most dear to Samantha Carter. Colonel O'Neill was the one who made it clear as the sun in the sky that he wasn't going to accept Jonas as Daniel's replacement, wasn't going to forget Daniel and embrace the man who'd taken his position, but more well hidden Sam suspected she was no better than the colonel. It wasn't fair to Jonas, but that was life.

Sam slowly closed the drawer again and turned to look toward Jack. He was standing by the window, hands in his pockets and body held still as he stared out into the night.

After a long silence, and without turning to face her, Jack began to speak. His voice was rough, low-pitched, and Sam soon learned why. "In Iraq, when I was a prisoner, it always had an end in sight. If we got killed then it would all stop and we wouldn't have to... endure anymore." Jack rolled up once on the balls of his feet, a painfully familiar Jack O'Neill mannerism that gave Sam hope.

"I've never told anyone how reassuring that was... I don't think I really understood how much I clung to that fact until now. Because I didn't have that with Ba'al. If I died it didn't stop there. And dying hurts... hurts like hell."

Sam cringed in sorrow and seethed with fury all at once.

Jack was talking again, softly but candidly in a way that Sam never heard from him before. Maybe this was how Jack had been with Daniel all the time... maybe Jack realized he needed to relent to finding this with someone else because his best friend was gone. After Daniel maybe Sam was the best he was going to be able to do.

"The consolation prize for going through it must be that it's the only time you ever have to do it. Not with Ba'al. No matter how many times I died it was never the end."

Sam was afraid to talk lest she break this moment of Jack actually telling her what was bothering him, what he was thinking. It was a moment built of crystals and silk threads; she would have to do so little to shatter it beyond repair. She didn't have the artisan hands to hold this together like Daniel had.

Afraid of the wrong words, Sam decided to fall back on action. She left her seat and moved toward Jack. She stopped just shy of being alongside him to afford him space, just close enough to let him know she was there. It was all she could think to give him.

Jack listened to her approach; he didn't react immediately to it. He finally cast a direct look at her over his shoulder, saying evenly, "In the end that became the hardest part."

Sam didn't know what to say. Maybe Daniel would have, but she didn't.

Jack half-turned, finally looking more squarely at her.

He'd been brutally honest, so she decided her best tactic would be to return the gesture.

"I'm worried about you, Colonel." 'Understatement of the year,' she thought to herself.

Jack only stared at her for a few seconds, didn't react to her confession, then nodded absently and looked down at the floor. When he looked back up at her Sam felt like she'd been given pardon. There was a faint but sincere smile barely touching Jack's lips. "I'm gonna be fine, Carter. I have it on authority."

Sam frowned at the strange comment, but the only explanation she got was a small, classic and familiar Jack smirk. It was his cryptic look of 'I know something you don't'. She also knew it was all the explanation she could expect out of him.

Sam was fine with that, as long as Jack was right... and she believed he was. Looking at him Sam could see Jack was wounded, but he wasn't devastated and he wasn't broken. They'd get through this, he would be okay, and she wouldn't lose another friend... at least not today.

END


End file.
